North America: Great Plains (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jodi Jacobson. James Ramsey.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animal bone was utilized for more than subsistence purposes. Most non-subsistence use has been focused on utilitarian tools. Bone-use beyond subsistence and utilitarian tool use is rarely identified or considered for its cultural impact or implications. Often it is difficult to identify in the archaeological record, and is frequently overlooked, with its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Keehner.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents a problematic ceramic taxonomy for the Late Woodland period (AD 500–1000) in the Central plains. The focus is on two archaeological taxonomic designation units: the Sterns Creek phase and the Grasshopper Falls phase. Through the lens of literature review, archival site records, and analysis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only LuAnn Wandsnider.

This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological record captures the material fallout of social processes operating at multiple temporal and spatial scales. Here I explore generational and supra-generational social processes of colonizers inhabiting a foreign and dynamic landscape under complex social conditions. Patent and census records allow for a big...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenna Carlson Dietmeier. Michael Fosha. Chris Nelson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The state of South Dakota currently has over thirty recorded bison kill sites. With development, agricultural practices, and natural erosion a threat to many of these sites, the need to identify, evaluate, and protect these and other unrecorded bison kill sites within the state is imminent. To aid in this process, staff from programs of the South Dakota State...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Julie Francis. Mark Willis.

This is an abstract from the "From the Plains to the Plateau: Papers in Honor of James D. Keyser" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Black Rock is an extremely rare, fully pecked rock art site in southwestern Wyoming. It is dominated by unusual anthropomorphic forms and associated abstract/geometric designs, with three identifiable zoomorphic figures (two mountain sheep and one elk). As part of a 1990s dating study, 14C and rock varnish...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tawnya Waggle. Laura Hronec. Jasmine Kidwell. Donald Purdon. Jenna Domeischel.

Blackwater Draw is known world-wide as the type-site for Clovis culture— the first demonstrable evidence of humans hunting mammoths in the New World. However, as a resource of Eastern New Mexico University, Blackwater Draw is also a valuable tool for creating connections between student research and community engagement. Students participate in internships, directed studies, and use the varied components of the site to write their undergraduate capstone papers and graduate theses. Through these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jodi Jacobson.

Until recently, highly fragmented bone assemblages in Texas were almost all attributed to poor preservation. A review of assemblages, however, indicates that while there are a high percentage of heavily fragmented medium-sized and larger mammal bone at many of these sites, bones associated with small mammals, reptiles, avian, and fish have only minimal fragmentation. A review of bone from a variety of sites with deep temporal and well-stratified context and of varying degree of preservation and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Wiewel.

This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Geophysical and Geospatial Research in the National Parks" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park commemorates the US Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to end legal racial segregation in public education and preserves significant resources like Monroe Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas. Before opening to the public on the ruling’s 50th anniversary, the Midwest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mavis Greer. John W. Greer.

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Rock Art Documentation, Research, and Analysis" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A small sandstone rockshelter overlooking Buffalo Creek in the southeastern foothills of the Bighorn Mountains has been of interest to researchers since the 1960s due to its shield-bearing warriors, but they account for only a few images at the site. Several different animals here include elk, bears, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Molly Herron.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While it is well known that Clovis people hunted mammoths (Mammuthus columbi), there are few cases in the Paleoindian record where campsites associated with mammoth remains have been found. The La Prele Mammoth site, located near Douglas, Wyoming, is an approximately 13,000-year-old mammoth kill site with an associated camp. While mammoth remains have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Fisher. Lewanne French.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dogs were an important resource for many Plains peoples, especially for the transportation of materials (e.g., timber, meat, water). The use of dogs for traction may have even facilitated high mobility in early North and South American populations. This high mobility eventually decreased with the introduction of agriculture across the northern Plains. Did...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tony Fitzpatrick.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cross‐over immunoelectrophoresis (CIEP) analyses from chipped stone artifacts have been completed to provide additional information on faunal procurement and use at Hell Gap. Results include positive reactions to dog and bovine antisera, with canid and bison bones represented in the faunal assemblage at the site. In addition to blood...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kendra McCabe. William Billeck.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Small drawn white beads are ubiquitous throughout archaeological sites in the United States but historically provided little chronological information due to their uniform appearance. Portable X-ray fluorescence provides a nondestructive means of determining relative amounts of elements used in glass bead opacifying agents. This study tested the chemical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Jones.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By analyzing radiocarbon date frequencies, it is possible to look at the prehistoric archaeological record on a wider plain, assessing how people dealt with large-scale changes in climate. While radiocarbon date frequencies have often been used to pinpoint time periods of population growth and decline, relatively little is known about how or why these changes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angel Nihells. Melissa G. Torquato. John Rapes. Matthew E. Hill. Erik Otárola-Castillo.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The foraging lifestyle persisted as the major human subsistence strategy worldwide for most of the human career. With notable exceptions, this way of life was eventually replaced by a subsistence base complemented and often dominated by cultivated foods. Archaeologists have proposed several hypotheses to explain this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Mackie. Todd Surovell. Spencer Pelton. Robert Kelly. Matthew O'Brien.

This is an abstract from the "Three Sides of a Career: Papers in Honor of Robert L. Kelly" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The nature of the transition from Clovis to Folsom complexes has long been an area of interest for Pleistocene archaeologists in the West. While it has been hypothesized that Folsom was an innovation started during the Clovis time period there have been few clear cases of temporal overlap. A recent find at the La Prele Mammoth...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brice Obermeyer. Susan Bachor.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2019, the Delaware Tribal Historic Preservation Office (DTHPO) partnered with East Stroudsburg University (ESU) to conduct noninvasive surveys of seven significant cultural and religious sites in Oklahoma. With support from the National Park Service (NPS), the DTHPO-led survey utilized ESU equipment and training to conduct the survey with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michele Koons. Mark Mitchell.

This is an abstract from the "Collaborative and Community-Based Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nestled in the foothills along Apex Gulch in Golden, CO, Magic Mountain is proclaimed to be one of the most important archaeological sites on Colorado’s Front Range. The earliest artifacts date back to 5000 BCE, when the site would have served as camping grounds for mobile hunter-gatherer groups. Later remains, such as ceramics and stone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben Schiery. Paul Burnett. Lawrence C. Todd. Erik Otárola-Castillo. Benjamin Schiery.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology II (QUANTARCH II)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Site prediction models have helped archaeological resource management in site prospecting, impact mitigation, and information recovery. Beginning in 2009, we developed probability models for the Shoshone National Forest (SNF). These models helped to prioritize inventory of areas burned in wildfires, to rapidly appraise...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stance Hurst. Eileen Johnson. Doug Cunningham.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The removal of the Comanche from northwest Texas in the early 1870s opened the Southern High Plains eastern escarpment region to new pastores (Spanish sheepherders from New Mexico) and Anglo-Americans, who created order out of the landscape through construction of built cultural heritage. An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was used to document the built cultural...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Montgomery.

This is an abstract from the "Contested Landscapes: The Archaeology of Politics, Borders, and Movement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1878, the Rosebud agency moved to its contemporary location at the junction of Rosebud Creek and the south fork of the White River. Over the course of the next decade, members of the Sincangu (Brulé) Sioux led by the charismatic headmen Spotted Tail came to settle within the reservation. While the reservation’s...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Adair.

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Maize, or corn, was one of the dominate crops to many North American Plains tribes, contributing beyond subsistence to origin beliefs, rituals, ceremonies, and trade. Given this, archaeologists seek to recreate the evolutionary processes by which maize became an important element in the economy of Plains...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rolfe Mandel.

Vance T. Holliday, the recipient of SAA’s 2018 Fryxell Award for Interdisciplinary Research, has devoted his career to applying geoscientific methods and theories in archaeological investigations. Vance’s scientific contributions, however, go beyond archaeology; he has played an important role in facilitating our understanding of landforms, sediments, and soils that provide the context for archaeological sites. The sites he has investigated, with a focus on their geomorphology, soils,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeremiah Perkins. Cambria Haley. David Klamm.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past two summers at the archaeological excavation of Etzanoa we used a Leica P40 scanner to create 3-D models of the excavation units. The accuracy of the measurements is + 1 mm. It is possible to take measurements of features and object from the model. The scanner has some limitations for recording deep excavations, and a novel method for overcoming...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Douglas MacDonald.

The University of Montana conducted an archaeological survey of the Cougar Creek valley, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, in 2017. We mapped Cougar Creek obsidian outcrops, procurement areas, and secondary processing sites. XRF analysis of natural and cultural samples of the snowflake obsidian show a distinct chemical composition, even though its creation event is coeval with the famous Obsidian Cliff ca. 180,000 years ago (ca. 30 miles northeast). Due to its highly variable quality, Native...